Luanne Platter
Luanne Leanne Kleinschmidt (née Platter) is a character in the animated series King of the Hill. She is the niece of Peggy Hill and Hank Hill (her father is Peggy's brother) and a cousin of Bobby Hill. She is drawn voluptuously, with an hourglass figure that she highlights with her standard outfit including a midriff-baring green tank top, red spandex cycling shorts, and white athletic shoes. In more professional settings, she may wear a reddish orange t-shirt with jeans, or a low-cut yellow dress for church. Character Luanne, as a character, has undergone some drastic changes as the show progressed. In the first season, she was portrayed as being of somewhat ordinary intelligence, had a husky voice that closely resembled Joseph's (Murphy also provided the voice of Joseph at the time), and would easily stand up to people who wronged her. However, the show has since changed her character significantly, raising the pitch of her voice and portraying her as a completely naive character who is easily swayed by ideas presented to her. She is unaware of even some simple words such as the meaning of "ignorant" (at one point in the show she attempts to assert herself by stating that she is a "proud, ignorant woman"). She briefly joined a Jack Chick/Fred Phelps-inspired evangelical movement, registered as a Communist when a recruiter informed her that George W. Bush devours puppies, and was lured into a cult, which she thought was a sorority at the time, that wanted her to work on a farm, growing fruit to make jelly. During the initial seasons of the show, Luanne was presented as somewhat promiscuous, although in an episode midway through the series run ("Luanne Virgin 2.0"), she became a born again virgin who puts on a puppet show (she is a Methodist, like most other characters on the show) and vowed not to have any more premarital sex. However, in a 2006 episode, she announced to Hank, Peggy, Bobby, and Lucky that she was pregnant with Lucky's child. Throughout the course of the show, her character and that of Joseph Gribble (who hit puberty in Season 5) are two of the few characters on the show to "age," and Luanne is one of the few (if not only) characters to have a character arc. In the Season 10 finale, "Edu-macating Lucky", Luanne's middle name was revealed to be "Leanne", apparently sharing her mother's first name. Coming to live with the Hills In the pilot episode, Luanne stays with the Hills while her parents sort out some marital issues; near the end of the episode, a tearful Luanne informs Hank that her mother stabbed her father with a fork and that their trailer home has capsized. She apparently moves in with the Hills permanently between the first and second episodes, turning Hank's beloved den into her bedroom, remaining with them for the majority of the series run. In an early episode ("Texas City Twister"), Hank, wanting to get Luanne out of his den and help her become self-reliant, tried to get her to move back into her trailer. Hank, Dale Gribble, Bill Dauterive, and Boomhauer attached a winch to the trailer and righted it, much to Luanne's consternation. A tornado struck shortly thereafter, tipping the trailer back over and nearly killing the Hills and Luanne in the process. The near-death experience changed Hank's views on his niece staying with him. Nevertheless, Hank wanting Luanne out of his den became a recurring theme (although he does love her). Puppetry In another early episode ("Meet the Manger Babies"), a glum Luanne discovers a box of cheap sock puppets at a garage sale and uses them to create a Christian-themed puppet show called "The Manger Babies", about the adventures of the animals who witnessed the birth of Jesus Christ. Oddly, the Manger Babies include a six-legged octopus and a penguin. The popularity of Luanne's show lands her a part-time job performing weekly shows for local TV station channel 84, a job she has maintained throughout the run of the series. A few of the manger babies are: *Obadiah the donkey *Hosea the cat *Gurgle Gurgle the octopus *Sir Reginald Featherbottom the Third a 'very British' bird In the season 13 episode "Manger Baby Einstein", Luanne was able to produce a Manger Babies DVD with the help of John Redcorn, which sold out on release. Luanne's success was short-lived, and her popularity soon waned. In an attempt to regain her popularity, she revamped the Manger Babies into a modern "gangsta" style theme, replacing Gurgle-Gurgle with a gun character. However, she stole the idea for the gun from a children's book that Dale was intending to write. To get revenge on Luanne for stealing his idea, Dale stole the Manger Babies and destroyed them in a dryer. Only Gurgle-Gurgle remained, who Luanne still uses to entertain Gracie. Relationship with Buckley For the first two seasons, Luanne dated Buckley, a monosyllabic, rude, and incompetent clerk at the Mega Lo Mart. Their relationship was apparently based around sex, as Buckley's romantic zenith was presenting Luanne with a birthday present that consisted of some old CDs that he didn't want anymore. They were rarely seen speaking, and when they were presented engaging in conversation, it usually consisted of Buckley making vague sexual remarks. It was very clear throughout the series that Hank did not like Buckley and thought of him as a degenerate. In the second season's finale, Buckley ignored Hank's advice not to drag around propane tanks by their nozzles, causing a gas leak that eventually blew up the Mega Lo Mart. Luanne, Buckley, Hank, and Chuck Mangione were trapped inside; in the third season premiere, we learn that Buckley was killed in the explosion. Luanne survived, but all her hair was singed off. She claimed that, because she "did not look back" at Buckley after she had broken up with him seconds before the blast, she was able to retain her eyebrows. She was more upset at the loss of her hair than Buckley's death, but she came around at the end of the episode. In a rare instance for an animated series, Luanne's hair did not "magically" regrow by the next episode. Rather, each successive episode featured Luanne's hair steadily becoming longer and longer until it had grown back to its previous length. Her hair did realistically regrow within the episode from smooth bald to fuzzy stubble over a couple days. The incident led her to claim that she would quit beauty school, stop "making the world look pretty," and become a "photojournalist" (taking pictures of news broadcasts running on television). She also briefly became outspoken about starving Irish children, if not knowledgeably so as she claimed a picture of Bobby was what a starving Irish child "looks like", and screamed "Fight the Occupation" at Buckley's funeral. Later Kahn confronted her indicating that she merely "put on strange Sinéad O'Connor act" due to her grief. Eventually, she realized that her anger was a result of her pain over Buckley's death. ("Death of a Propane Salesman") Later relationships Following Buckley's demise, Luanne briefly dated self-proclaimed genius Rad Thibodeaux. He was extremely careful not to actually make a commitment to her, and used her to hold a party in Boomhauer's house while he was away. She later became a "born-again virgin," participating in a church ceremony in which she vowed to never have premarital sex again. Initially, Luanne buckled under stress and nearly married Rhett Van Der Graaf, an insecure, neurotic virgin of 22, just so that she could have sex again, but eventually decided against it and remained celibate. Luanne nearly got married a second time to a meat-packing tycoon named Trip Larson. Luanne eventually learned that Trip was only attracted to her because she was a dead ringer for the woman in the company's advertisement featuring a Swiss girl and a mountain climber posing with a pig. Trip, a schizophrenic, had fantasized since childhood of being the pig in the advertisement, and planned to turn Luanne into the Swiss girl by dyeing her hair red and forcing her to dress in a frilly blue and white pinafore, so that she could care for him. Trip was subsequently killed in a bizarre accident in the slaughter shed when he tried to lure Luanne into committing suicide with him. In a bit of tragic irony, he finally became sane after suffering an electrical shock, which served as ad hoc electroshock therapy seconds before his death. In Seasons Ten through Twelve, Luanne dated, then married Elroy "Lucky" Kleinschmidt, a bucktoothed, lazy, 38-year-old stereotypical redneck who supported himself by intentionally injuring himself inside stores and then suing the owner. Lucky loves to play in rock bands, including Big Mountain Fudge Cake with John Redcorn, and he dropped out of school in the 9th grade because he wasn't allowed to smoke(an interesting thing to note is that Lucky's favorite band is Brownsville Station, who performed the 1973 song Smokin' In the Boys Room). Luanne is apparently attracted to him because of his resemblance to the trailer people with whom she grew up. They announced her pregnancy in the season 10 episode "Edu-macating Lucky", but she did not show any signs of pregnancy until the season 13 episode "Lucky See, Monkey Do" (This leading many fans to believe she was suffering from hysterical pregnancy). She gave birth to their child in that same episode, a daughter she named Gracie Margaret Kleinschmidt (after Peggy convinced her not to name her Lasagna Kleinschmidt). Lucky consistently shows his devotion and love for Luanne, such as in "Life: A Loser's Manual", when he protects her from learning of her father's true location: not on an oil rig as she believes, but in prison. Luanne is often seen with "in" girls who wear trendy clothing. On one occasion, Luanne seems to mutter "Lucy" and a blonde, trendy teen turns around, but she goes off into a group of more girls before a conversation ensues. After a time, Lucy can be seen as a background character in mall scenes, school scenes, and the like. No other friends have been named personally by Luanne other than Lucy. Education When the series began, Luanne was beginning classes at the Arlen Beauty College, with the ambition of becoming a Hollywood makeup artist and successfully hiding the bags beneath Michael Douglas' eyes. Luanne proved to be a terrible hairstylist, and struggled to complete beauty school. Following Buckley's death, she had visions of Buckley in angelic form, who informed her that Jesus wanted her to take a different path. During one of these visions, Luanne crashed her car near the parking lot of a community college, where she was mistaken for a student. Luanne took this as a sign to begin pursuing a higher education and dropped out of beauty school and enrolled in the community college. What she was studying was never made explicit, though in one episode she mentions "pre-med", in another she states she is a "pre-education major", and in yet another, implies that she's taking psychology, though her definition of the word to Peggy ("the disease of psychology") indicates she was probably failing the course. Luanne's enrollment in college provided the impetus for her to move out of Hank's den, a move made easier when Bill's next door neighbor, old Mr. Popacito, suddenly died of a heart attack while mowing his lawn. Luanne moved into the home with a trio of arrogant slackers and radicals, who criticize her lifestyle and personal philosophies while at the same time refusing to clean up after themselves or cover their share of the household expenses. Finally taking matters into her own hands, she paid the overdue bills and then closed all the accounts (which were in her name alone), so that the others would have to be responsible for themselves. Luanne's roommate problem was apparently solved when Cotton Hill and another WWII buddy, "Topsy" Toppington, arrived at her house in the middle of the night looking for his friend (Pops). The two were instead greeted by one of Luanne's roommates, who accused Cotton of being a Nazi; enraged, Cotton attacked the roommate. He is briefly seen in the fifth season episode, "Hank and the Great Glass Elevator" at Luanne's party. Production history The "Lu Ann Platter" is a popular combination platter served at the Luby's cafeteria chain, and is a half portion entree with vegetables. This plate was the inspiration for the character name Luanne Platter. The cafeteria itself is characterized as "Luly's" on the King of the Hill, and is claimed by Hank to have "8 types of ketchup and 3 types of catsup". Reduced role Shortly after Luanne began attending college, her role in the series was diminished, almost to the point that the character was written out of the show (for an extended period, she did not appear in any episodes). This was due to Brittany Murphy's increasing popularity at the box office and her pursuit of a movie career. One prominent episode that came around the time of Murphy's temporary departure was a 2000 "election special" in which Hank encouraged her to become involved in politics so that she could vote for George W. Bush in the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election. During voter registration, though, Luanne was informed by a "lady in a poncho" that Bush ate puppies; Luanne took the woman on her word, and registered as a communist. Career fulfillment After a few seasons, Luanne became a full-time character again, as she began working part-time at a hip unisex salon called "Hottyz" with Hank's friend Dauterive], where her ability earned her the position of First Chair (the closest chair to the door, reserved for the best stylist in the salon). Bill was only permitted to work at the salon because the other employees believed him to be a homosexual, under the assumption that only gay men can properly style hair, and because they wanted to use him as a status symbol. When the manager of Hottyz found out that Bill was a heterosexual, he and Luanne were fired. Hank approached his mentally-ill barber, Jack, about giving Luanne a job. Upon discovering that he would be "stealing" Hottyz' first chair, Jack happily accepted. Luanne left college and became a full-time hair stylist for Jack, and moved back in with the Hills (after an offer from Peggy) in order to save money. Category:Characters